Yes, But No
by Kasey10
Summary: An answer to the question. (Post-ep to "A House is not a Home)


TITLE: Yes, But No

AUTHOR: Kasey

POST-EP: A House is not a Home

RATING: Luke/Lorelai

SUMMARY: An answer to the question.

DISCLAIMERS: Don't own them. Please don't sue.

"What?"

She didn't like the look in his eyes – like he thought she was crazy. "Luke will you marry me?" she repeated, this time her voice just a little bit stronger. "Please?"

He wasn't sure when he started wanting to say 'yes'. But something about her sitting there with her big sad eyes looking like she had lost the world...

"No," he answered, the only logical response he could give. Lorelai drew in a deep breath and nodded, her lips pressed tightly together as she stood and gathered her purse. "Not yet." When she still didn't look at him, he continued. "Your asking me that is only because of Rory – which, I'll grant you, is a perfectly valid reason to want to cling to something, but when we get married I don't want it to be about that."

"When?" she said quietly, tilting her head.

He didn't hear her and continued. "It should be about us, and I should be the one doing the asking over your favourite meal and lots of pie and a thousand flowers or something sappy like that because I know you sometimes like that romantic chick stuff, and there should definitely be a ring involved. And I'd come up with some speech explaining things to you that don't really need explained, then you'd say 'yes, Luke, of course I'll marry you' and we'd go to bed and forget all about dinner except afterward you'd want pie because you're like that-"

"I am like that," she smiled faintly, starting again to get misty-eyed.

"Then we'd get married and the whole town would be there and Rory'll be your maid of honor and I'm sure Kirk would work his way into the ceremony in some inappropriate way."

"No she wouldn't, Luke. I lost her."

"No you didn't. You two are too close for that. You weren't getting along before she left last summer either and she came back and was the same Rory as ever."

"Was she though? I mean is this something that's been building ever since last summer? Did she start...slipping away then and it just now got too big to keep hopping over?" Lorelai batted hastily at her eyes as tears started welling for what felt like at least the seventeenth time since she had left Hartford.

Luke sighed quietly and drew her into his arms. "You haven't lost Rory," he said softly as she rested her cheek against his shoulder. "We'll get her back." Lorelai nodded just a little. "She's a smart girl. She'll realize soon this is what she has to do – I can't picture her being away from school more than a semester. She loves the books and studying too much. And she loves you too much to cut off contact."

"She's just...never been like this before. She was always so...driven and she's known her entire life what she wanted to do..."

"She's also never been told she's no-good before. It knocked her back; she'll get past it."

"Sometimes you don't get past being told you're a failure, Luke, sometimes you spend the rest of your life convinced and wondering and being driven crazy by your neurotic back-stabbing parents."

"Don't you start too."

"I just can't believe I trusted them," she whispered, shaking her head, returning to her earlier despondence. "I've been slapped down by them so many times in my life, I should've known better."

"You thought they'd have Rory's best interested in mind. It wasn't an unreasonable thought, even if your parents are unreasonable people," he added in his usual annoyed grumble.

She pulled back, her arms around his neck, and looked at him with a faint watery smile. "What would I do without you?"

He contemplated a number of answers to that one – 'You'd have to find another outlet for your coffee habit' being among them – but was unable to really come up with anything that could fit with her mood and state of mind. There were times he half-wished he knew how to express this kind of thing better, and not quite so sarcastically, but that ship had sailed.

She saw his discomfort and, having known him as long as she had both in and out of romantic relationships, understood that his lack of response had nothing to do with unheld sentiment.


End file.
